Introduction

Abstract

The world of the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been characterised as a global society driven by information and knowledge. In this world, it is no longer ‘raw materials, land, labour and machinery’ which are major assets, it is ‘know-how, creativity, ingenuity and imagination’ (Leadbeater 1999).¹ One of the main channels for communicating know-how is text, whether it is of a formal kind and explicitly set out as written reports, text books, professional and learned journals or lectures, or of a less formal and more implicit kind, such as letters, emails, other personal communications and conversations including social media, blogs, notes and so on. There are clear historical precedents for the importance of text in the context of science and translation in the form of what Montgomery describes as an ‘aggressive trade in books and ideas — the buying and selling of textual matter, whether in piecemeal, altered, or counterfeit fashion’ which has ‘long been involved in the creating of knowledge systems and the saving of lives, well before the present-day notion of a “knowledge-based society”’ (2000: 13).